Evidence of third Xbox Game Pass price hike found as Microsoft charges $80 for new games

Xbox Game Pass may be getting a price hike commensurate with Microsoft's new $80 video games policy.

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Microsoft recently made the unpopular announcement that it will raise prices of its consoles, games, and accessories. New Xbox games will cost $80, and the first one was revealed to be Obsidian's The Outer Worlds 2, which is a smaller-scale game compared to AAA RPG megaliths like Skyrim. The Xbox Series X 2TB console costs $729, which is more than Sony's $699 PS5 Pro. There was just one thing missing from Microsoft's reveal: an Xbox Game Pass price hike.

Now it looks like we may have evidence that Xbox Game Pass is getting another price increase in accordance with Microsoft's new inflation-adjusted cost models. A new string referring to a subscription price increase was purportedly spotted in the Xbox Cloud Gaming website's source code by Twitter user redphx, but we were unable to verify independenty through a quick right click -> view source lookup on Chrome.

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If Microsoft does decide to raise Xbox Game Pass prices, it'll be the third increase for the service. Microsoft has taken a more slow and measured approach to price adjustments for Game Pass.

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Back in July 2023, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate went from $15 to $17, an increase of just $2 and +13%.

A year later, Microsoft raised the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate from $15 to $20, a more substantial $5 or +33% jump.

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This staggered and gradual price increase is typical for subscription services, but unlike other media services, Game Pass hasn't had many hikes over the years; in fact, it's only gone up by $5 over the past 5 years.

Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer recently reiterated that the games division is beholden to Microsoft to grow both at the top and the bottom.

"Our jobs inside the company is to run a good business. We're accountable to Microsoft for running a good business, a healthy business that continues to grow at both top line and bottom line. That's kind of a foundation for us," Spencer said.

Microsoft has yet to update the official Xbox Game Pass subscriber count, but an internal data whiz may have let slip that the service has over 35 million subscribers.

Read Also:

• Xbox Game Pass cloud-only subscription tier may be in the works
• Xbox Game Pass Ultimate price has increased 33%, or $5, in 5 years